Edwin van der Sar has been sidelined for eight weeks after undergoing surgery on a broken finger. The United keeper suffered the injury in the recent penalty shoot-out defeat to Bayern Munich and is now set to sit out until the end of September. Potentially this will see him miss the first five or six Premier League games.

This is huge news for us fantasy managers which immediately puts us on alert for a bargain…

Ben Foster could now be set to be handed the responsibility of seeing United through those first few games in goal, although Tomasz Kuszczak is another option for Ferguson. We will be given a strong indication of Ferguson’s choice later tonight when United take on Valencia, prior to the Community Shield clash with Chelsea on Sunday.

The man between the posts in Sunday’s game would surely be set to start against Birmingham on the first game of the season and would therefore represent an immediate bargain in fantasy terms. Both Foster and Kuszczak come in well under the price of Van der Sar across the various fantasy games, with both keepers priced at 5.0 in the Fantasy Premier League game. That would allow us to gather United clean sheets for a cut-down price, enabling us to do without the likes of Vidic and Evra for opening games, freeing up significant cash for signings elsewhere. Further tinkering required then.